Health Care: As Democrats grow increasingly worried that ObamaCare will explode on the launch pad just as midterm elections get going, the Obama administration seeks to pin blame on Republicans. Good luck with that.

Earlier this week, Health and Human Services head Kathleen Sebelius admitted that she didn't realize how complicated getting ObamaCare off the ground would be.

Sebelius complained that "no one fully anticipated" the difficulties involved in implementing ObamaCare, or how confusing it would be with the public.

She wasn't talking about the massive and impossible task of imposing central planning on one-sixth of the nation's economy.

Instead, she was trying to find a way to blame Republicans for ObamaCare's failures when the inevitable problems start emerging.

Rather than say "let's get on board, let's make this work," recalcitrant Republicans have forced her to engage in "state-by-state political battles," Sebelius said at a Harvard School of Public Health forum. "The politics has been relentless."

So let's see if we get this. Democrats shoved an unpopular, expensive, ill-conceived and poorly written law down the country's throat with no Republican support, and without bothering to see whether states would want to take on the thankless and costly task of helping the feds implement it.

And now that many of these states are rebelling, it's the Republicans' fault?

Sebelius' fellow Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, had a more accurate take on the problem the administration faces: the law is "probably the most complicated piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress" and "if it isn't done right the first time, it will just simply get worse."

Rockefeller, like a growing number of Democrats, realizes that ObamaCare is shaping up to be a political disaster for the party next November.

The influential Cook Political Report noted earlier this month that almost all of the Democratic insiders they talked to "voiced concern about the potential for the issue to hurt Democrats in 2014."

And just what could explain these concerns?

Maybe it's because even Sebelius now admits that ObamaCare will force insurance claims up 32%.

Or possibly it's because, despite endless assurances that the insurance exchanges would be ready on time, the administration had to delay for a year a key feature meant to give small business a choice of health plans.

Or because neither Sebelius nor the states have provided evidence they can get the rest of the exchanges ready by Oct. 1, when ObamaCare's open enrollment begins.

Or perhaps Democrats' fears stem from state insurance commissioners warning of a rate shock once ObamaCare's "community rating" rules and benefit mandates start. Or from rising evidence the law is hurting job growth as small businesses try to avoid its costs.

None of this, mind you, has anything to do with Republicans. And if the GOP were smart, it'd be focused on making sure that, come next November, the public knows that, too.

Undocumented aliens have always been a part of the equation, Poindexter. Try again.

Poindexter?

I'll tell you what Kotex, if I qoute you, then you can give me a response. I didn't ask you a question, because you are an asshole. You don't know what you are talking about, so why would I want an answer from you?

If you think the demographics in this country has been a constant and actuaries don't adjust the variables in their studies of health care costs, then you clearly are an asshole.

Kotter is completely clueless about the source of medical cost inflation.

How far out of your way do you have to go to be an asshole?

Not everybody pays into the system or uses the system equally.

"population growth" ie increase in moochers from 3rd world countries who tend to get sick alot and require more medical treatment because they didn't receive preventative care back in Mexico.

Things like TB, Hepatitis, etc.

Easily preventable diseases in the USA with low costs to prevent them, versus actually having to treat them because they didn't get shots or proper nutrition etc in Mexico, are very expensive to treat.

Even if it isn't adjusted for inflation--THIS is precisely the problem. Out of control costs, driven in large part, if not mostly, by windfall profits for asshole middle-men (government) in our completely messed up system.

Kotter is completely clueless about the source of medical cost inflation.

I'll play along: please, enlighten us, sir?

HINT: It's not nearly as easy to pinpoint as EITHER the extreme left or right wish to paint it--it's incredibly complex, but there are about 3 or 4 things that could be done that would immediately stop it in its tracks. I'll post a serious response later, if I get a serious response from you...deal?

__________________Trump: "When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm....the same. The temperament is not that different."

I'd generally agree; but when NOTHING else works, it's sometimes necessary. When the free market fails so miserably, it's the only real option. The industry was given opportunities to fix itself, time and again over the last 2-40 years....and all they ever, really, seemed to care about is higher profits. Period. By putting profits ahead of patients, they brought it on themselves.

No Kotter, free markets get the blame after gov intervention pushed the demand curve up creating no competition and more profit for insurance by giving them guaranteed markets—exactly what Obamacare does more of. You're relying on cliches and emotion.

Time to begin learning economics. Start with: Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt. He used to be a leftist, but changed when he learned otherwise.

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“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize“~ Voltaire

No one disputes the diagnosis: American health care is in lousy shape. As a practicing physician for more than 30 years, I find the pervasiveness of managed care very troubling.

The problems with our health care system are not the result of too little government intervention, but rather too much. Contrary to the claims of many advocates of increased government regulation of health care, rising costs and red tape do not represent market failure. Rather, they represent the failure of government policies that have destroyed the health care market.

It's time to rethink the whole system of HMOs and managed care. This entire unnecessary level of corporatism rakes off profits and worsens the quality of care. But HMOs did not arise in the free market; they are creatures of government interference in health care dating to the 1970s. These non-market institutions have gained control over medical care through collusion between organized medicine, politicians, and drug companies, in an effort to move America toward “free” universal health care.

One big problem arises from the 1974 ERISA law, which grants tax benefits to employers for providing health care, while not allowing similar incentives for individuals. This results in the illogical coupling between employment and health insurance. As such, government removed the market incentive for health insurance companies to cater to the actual health-care consumer. As a greater amount of government and corporate money has been used to pay medical bills, costs have risen artificially out of the range of most individuals.

Only true competition assures that the consumer gets the best deal at the best price possible by putting pressure on the providers. Patients are better served by having options and choices, not new federal bureaucracies and limitations on legal remedies. Such choices and options will arrive only when we unravel the HMO web rooted in old laws, and change the tax code to allow individual Americans to fully deduct all healthcare costs from their taxes, as employers can.

As government bureaucracy continues to give preferences and protections to HMOs and trial lawyers, it will be the patients who lose, despite the glowing rhetoric from the special interests in Washington. Patients will pay ever rising prices and receive declining care while doctors continue to leave the profession in droves.

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“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize“~ Voltaire

HINT: It's not nearly as easy to pinpoint as EITHER the extreme left or right wish to paint it--it's incredibly complex, but there are about 3 or 4 things that could be done that would immediately stop it in its tracks. I'll post a serious response later, if I get a serious response from you...deal?

You've already taken your stab at laughable causes and magic cures. Are you telling me none of that was serious?

__________________

“The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something they’re not.” - Hillary Clinton